Ask the Therapist
How Can You Tell if a Nightmare is a Flashback or Repressed Memory
If you have PTSD, how can you tell if a nightmare is a flashback or repressed memory or if it was all a bad dream?
Thank you
The function of dreams is two-fold. One is to "clean up" after the waking cycle, which is why you often find "traces" of your day or recent experiences in your dreams. The second is to manifest subconscious (things/events that we can recall, but are not immediately available to us) and unconscious (things/events of which we remain fundamentally unaware) content that we can't handle emotionally when we are awake. By their nature dreams are symbolic.
That said, the intrusions or flashbacks experienced by a sufferer of PTSD can be any or all of the things that you describe. That sounds like a cop out on my part, but it's really just the way the mind works. A nightmare might be a re-experience of the actual event, it might be a magnification of a detail, it is almost always the manifestation of a repressed memory (repressed memory is the foundation for PTSD) or it could be a symbolic representation of the events as they apply to the interior life -- a plain old nightmare.
One technique for managing this is to keep a dream journal. Do it for a week, then look back and see if you can find any patterns. Continue the work for as long as it takes and share the emerging patterns with your mental health professional as material for your therapy. You might also want to keep a voice-activated tape recorder by the bed, in case you talk or cry out in your sleep. Keep a separate journal and note any intrusions you suffer during the day...daydreams are just as important as nightdreams...and look for their triggers.
